Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master Review: Excessive, in a good way

1. Introducing the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master2. CPU Testing: Cinebench R23 and CrossMark3. Testing: HandBrake and AIDA Memory4. Games Testing: 3D Mark and Far Cry 65. Games Testing: Far Cry New Dawn and Watch Dogs Legion6. Technical Testing: Power and Heat7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

The Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master is an unusual motherboard as the specification is more akin to an Xtreme model than a Master, except you don't have to suffer the LCD display or the monumental price tag.

To put it another way, Gigabyte has inflated the hardware in the Z690 Master without doing anything outrageous to the price. We have no doubt that some potential customers will be put off by the single PCIe Gen 5.0 graphics slot while others will be drawn in by the colossal level of VRM hardware.

Our advice is that you don't get too excited by either point as you have plenty of PCIe expansion and will not require 19x 105A Vcore power any time soon.

Balanced against that the hardware has an impressive quality and you can expect the 8-layer PCB and 10,000 hour rated capacitors will deliver solid, reliable performance for many years.

Our three complaints about the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master centre around the rear I/O panel where we point out the graphics connector would be more useful if it was HDMI, that the two USB Type-C connectors could be labelled more clearly and that a second Ethernet port would be handy.None of those points is a kill shot and for some people they will miss the target entirely.

We like the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master, found it was good to work with and have little doubt it will serve you very nicely.

You can buy the Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master for £444.95 from Overclockers UK HERE.

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Pros:

• Epic VRMs with first class heatsinks.
• Clean design with single PCIe 5.0 graphics slot.
• Superb support for M.2 storage, USB, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
• Huge number of PWM fan headers.

Cons:

• The two Type-C connectors on the rear I/O look identical.
• We want dual LAN.
• HDMI would be more useful on the I/O panel than DisplayPort.

KitGuru says: The Gigabyte Z690 Aorus Master offers high end hardware that is tailor made for Intel Core i9-12900K.

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